Computer systems may contain a large amount of data, some of which is seldom used or accessed. Throughout a workday, users may frequently view, create, or modify documents, thereby increasing this amount of data. Additionally, each of these documents may be saved to local or remote storage. Computer systems, however, may have limited storage resources. Adding additional resources may be costly and inconvenient, such as when a user's local storage needs to be increased. The user could be, for example, deprived of his machine for a period of time while new storage is installed. Further, if a mistake occurs during the installation process, the user's data may be lost. Users therefore often need a scalable storage option for backing up and restoring their data.
Archiving data to remote, scalable storage may help alleviate the inconvenience associated with storage expansion. Once a data object has been archived remotely, it may be removed from the local system to increase storage capacity. The archiving process may, however, be based on factors beyond a user's control. The computer system may have no mechanism for determining which data objects are important to the user. For example, the system may be unable to differentiate between business-critical and non-critical documents. Additionally or alternatively, a user's priorities may change and once non-critical documents may suddenly become more important. As a result, the system may arbitrarily give archiving priority to the non-critical documents over the critical ones. When a user attempts to recover the critical documents, the documents may be unavailable or archived on low-cost, low-performance storage. As a result, time may be wasted and information lost.
There is a need, therefore, for an improved method, article of manufacture, and apparatus for archiving data based on its criticality to the user.